Five Reasons Why Company Blog Posts are good things

I know what you’re thinking – 500 word rambles about how great a company is, written by someone who would much rather be writing computer code or cracking some data – are not a great addition to knowledge and understanding on the internet

But Read Write Web just put out a plea for the importance of the company blog and encouraged more companies and start-ups to write blogs.

Why? Well, there are at least five good reasons why companies should do blog posts:

1) Transparency works well on the internet. An authentic-sounding blog from the CEO could do better than a slow-loading flash animation in getting the character of your brand and the purpose of your company across.

2) Get your side of the story across: whether you’re trying out something new or apologising for a mix-up – it helps people to hear it from the horse’s mouth, rather than just from random speculation from journalists and independent bloggers…
Is that buggy new feature a sign of failure at the top or an interesting experiment?

3) Feedback – enable comments and this is a great place for feedback from customers. Reply and you come across as much more accountable.

4) New content on your site means more eyeballs. If it’s updated regularly it will mean more hits, more links on twittter, more interaction. Even though people may not have your blog at the top of their Google reader, it’s still going to put your site higher up in their consciousness. Sometimes a select group of people who are really interested can be more useful than the general public.

5) The act of writing can force business-people to have to formulate their ideas better. This was the main thrust of the RWW article. Even if you’re not a words person, having to clarify your ideas so other people can understand them is a good discipline. It can pay for as well as on the public relations side.